Man found unconscious in hotel calls himself Johan Ek, speaks Swedish

Jul. 7, 2013

Some of the photographs found on Michael Boatwright, who can't remember anything from his past.

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PALM SPRINGS — When Michael Boatwright woke up in the emergency room at Desert Regional Medical Center, the nurses began asking him questions for which it became clear he had no answers. The gray-haired, soft-spoken man looked at his identity card and didn’t recognize his own face. He answered only to Johan Ek.

The man was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room on Palm Canyon Drive at noon on Feb. 28, said Lisa Hunt-Vasquez, the social worker assigned to track down next-of-kin information and help to piece Boatwright’s story together.

He had with him a duffel bag of casual athletic clothes, a backpack, five tennis rackets, two cell phones, some cash, a set of old photos and four forms of identification: a passport, California identification card, veteran’s medical card and a Social Security card. Each of them identified him as Michael Thomas Boatwright.

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After police arrived at the motel, he was admitted to Desert Regional.

Hospital staff kept him in the acute floors for two to three weeks, conducting mental and physical health exams to determine what was wrong with him. On March 13, a psychiatrist and psychologist diagnosed the patient with Transient Global Amnesia in a “fugue state,” Hunt-Vasquez said. The conditions were likely triggered by some kind of emotional or physical trauma.

Dissociative fugue is a mental disorder characterized by memory loss about a person’s past, “sudden and unplanned travel,” identity confusion and possible adoption of a new identity, according to a WebMD profile of the disorder. It is “relatively rare.”

Transient Global Amnesia is a neurological phenomenon that causes people to “stop encoding new memories,” said Dr. Richard Caselli, professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix.

They are both temporary conditions that leave people confused about their surroundings and “a pretty scary thing for patients,” he said. But Transient Global Amnesia typically lasts hours. Such patients can also recall long-term memories, but not new ones. The Mayo Clinic sees about 24-100 cases of it each year, he said.

It is “theoretically possible” the patient could have both coexisting or had both at the initial point of diagnosis, but Caselli does not know if that has ever occurred.

“Certainly one does not imply the other,” he said. “It’s not somebody that’s got a psychiatric history that (Transient Global Amnesia) is more likely to happen to. I don’t know what the vice versa would be.”

He also did not rule out the possibility that this could be a different form.

“Is there something out there that is somehow physiologically similar and can last for months? There could be, but nothing I’ve ever heard of,” he said.

Fugue state, however, can last up to months, the profile said.

The difficulty with the fugue state diagnosis, though, is that there is “a little more room for error there than the typical diagnosis,” Caselli said.

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“It’s fair to say that whenever one is talking about disability from a psychiatric disorder and it’s not one of the organic psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, I would imagine there’s a lot of controversy about that,” he said. “How do you tell if somebody’s faking it or not faking it?”

Still, the dissociative fugue state is recognized in the diagnostic psychological manual and occurs occasionally.

Medical staff on his case at Desert Regional determined that with this diagnosis, and unable to speak the language or remember anything about his past, it would be unsafe to release Boatwright into the community. He was moved to the hospital’s skilled nursing facility, where he remains until the medical team decides how to safely discharge him.

“He’s kind of a blank slate,” Hunt-Vasquez said.

Worldwide search

Hunt-Vasquez began her search with Boatwright’s red, white and blue Department of Veterans Affairs card. The agency had no information about his next-of-kin, but it confirmed one piece of the puzzle: that the man had served from 1971 to 1973 in the U.S. Navy as an aviation mechanic. The VA had one emergency contact listed for Boatwright: a name, address and telephone number in Japan, but the social worker was unable to reach anyone there.

Boatwright had flown to Palm Springs from Hong Kong on Feb. 24, the day his Chinese visa expired, Hunt-Vasquez said, but no one knows why he was in the region either. There are theories he had come for tennis, because of the rackets and the time he had arrived when many tournaments are held in the Coachella Valley. Leads were sent out to various tennis organizers. No one was able to track down a connection.

Over the course of her investigation, Hunt-Vasquez scoured the Internet for information.

His testimonial is included on the website of TPR English School in Zhuhai with a photo showing a younger, blonder Boatwright, sporting glasses and a professional suit.

Hunt-Vasquez used these pieces to connect the dots and discover that Boatwright was, she believes, a 3D graphic designer and had taught English in both Japan for 10 years and China for four years. He had resigned at TPR one year before she reached out to them. The school knew Boatwright was divorced but had no information on his ex-wife.

She moved on to contacting both Japanese and Chinese consulates, but neither of them had next-of-kin information for Boatwright. His blue U.S. passport also had an address for a Japanese person she believes is his ex-wife, but law enforcement were sent to the home and the woman had moved without notifying the country’s agency of a new address.

Hospital staff also called every number — all foreign — on the telephones he was found with, but most of them did not answer their phones or return voicemails. They tracked down two people who knew him in Asia — one was an acquaintance who had met Boatwright on the tennis courts in China and the other had worked with his ex-wife at an English school. Neither of them had further information about Boatwright’s next-of-kin or his life, Hunt-Vasquez said.

“We had hit our dead end,” she said.

The team changed tactics to focus on Boatwright’s birthplace, listed as Florida on his identification but set as Stockholm, Sweden, on the Internet.

Hunt-Vasquez reached out to Dade County police, based off the Florida birthplace connection, though Boatwright had listed his home as Stockholm. The department transferred her to the Dade County Missing Persons Bureau, and officials there pulled up Boatwright’s records and said his parents were dead — his mother in 2012 and father in 1997. He had other aunts and uncles who had also died and another ex-wife he had divorced in 1983.

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That woman told the bureau she had restarted her family and had no further information except that he might have had two sisters in Sweden. They couldn’t pass along her contact information because of confidentiality reasons.

The mystery of where Boatwright was born has still not been cleared up, although there are photos of him in Sweden at a young age. No one has been able to reach or find confirmation about possible sisters. Hunt-Vasquez next sought help from the Swedish Embassy and consulate, which had no next-of-kin information for him.

Boatwright now sits in the hospital with almost no family left, he said.

The rims of Boatwright’s eyes turned red as he dabbed at the tears that quickly sprung up and turned away from the interview.

“When I look at the photos, I see my ex-wife and my son … my mother and grandmother, but I don’t recognize them. I don’t know them,” he said.

He would like to know his son.

Life in the hospital

“Sometimes it makes me really sad and sometimes it just makes me furious about the whole situation and the fact that I don’t know anybody, I don’t recognize anybody,” Boatwright said.

He knows nothing about Palm Springs, about how to exchange money, ride the bus, about homeless shelters or hotels. He is in some ways like a 5-year-old who cannot function independently, Hunt-Vasquez said.

He was prescribed antidepressants at the start of his stay because the anxiety and stress of not knowing his circumstances would completely freeze him. Now, he has good and bad days, but he is starting to pick up on some things, making jokes about ice fishing in Sweden with his translator.

Boatwright spends his days running and exercising on hospital equipment as much as three times daily in the rehabilitation gym. It’s the only thing that takes his mind off his troubles, he said.

This spring, he found a tennis court across the street from the Palm Springs hospital and played there, but he was told he could not go back because it was a liability. He said his muscle memory allowed him to play, and it felt wonderful. He also has said he believes he used to be a tennis coach because of the five rackets from China, and he would like to do that again, to help youth develop their talents.

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His YouTube account shows he was subscribed to several tennis channels, and he dons a sweater bearing the name of a college tennis tournament in gold embossing.

While in the hospital, Boatwright has also been in contact with the local Swedish-American community, after sending an email in Swedish to Linda Kosvic, chairperson of the Vasa Order of America’s Desert Viking Lodge in San Jacinto.

Kosvic and fellow member Viola Wyler have befriended Boatwright, meeting with him regularly. They are the only people outside of hospital staff and his translator that he has spoken with since waking up in the emergency room in February.

“I felt really bad for him for what he was going through, and then I had to look on, you know, what if you were in a foreign country and something like this happened?” Kosvic said. “What if you had an incident where you lost your memory, you had no way to talk with anybody, and you were in a country where there wasn’t even a translator?”

Boatwright chats freely in Swedish with Wyler in the hospital conference room before his Desert Sun interview, sprinkling in laughter. She seems to know much of his story.

When Boatwright first came to Desert Regional, he had nightmares almost every night, Wyler said.

“Those dreams are the blockage,” she said.

She has had many conversations with him — about the president, movie stars, the Second World War, anything that could trigger his memory. But he said he can’t remember any of it.

“All of the events that he talked about, he has never been involved in it; he always feels that he is looking in,” Wyler said. “He is looking in. He is not there.”

Wyler guesses that Boatwright was in Sweden in the mid-1980s. His Swedish does not belong to any of the country’s strong regional dialects, leading her to believe he either learned it later in life — possibly in his teenage years — or has not used it much in the past 30 or so years, she said.

The photos, colored frames spanning decades of the life he says he no longer remembers, show scenes of children in the snow, a log cabin surrounded by green fields, young Asian students, Boatwright in what appears to be traditional Swedish regalia, and one of him with who are believed to be his ex-wife and son celebrating the young boy’s birthday. He looks at them closely under his glasses.

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“When I look at them, I get a sense of comfort and security,” Boatwright said.

“I believe … they came from a time in my life when I was so secure and safe,” he added.

Wyler also has picked up on Boatwright’s habit of chewing his short, worn-down nails, but noted that he feels secure at the hospital.

“But could he handle it on his own?” Wyler said.

Everyone agrees that he can’t stay at Desert Regional forever.

What's next

Boatwright has no insurance or income, further complicating his situation, Hunt-Vasquez said. And he has very little money he can access — $180 in American funds, some Chinese money.

He had several Chinese bank accounts but could only access one of them —with $7 in it. Chinese banks have strict PIN codes and regulations that don’t allow the U.S.-based medical staff to find out how much he had in them, the Chinese consulate told them.

Boatwright has also lost his ability to perform the jobs he held in the past, including graphic design and teaching English, since he no longer speaks the language or possesses the skills. Psychiatric facilities that could conduct follow-up care won’t treat him without any method of payment.

He could also lose his prescriptions when he is sent away.

The hospital is currently funding him and working to find a next step, but he is using resources and has no physical ailments. Many agree that Desert Regional is no longer an appropriate place for his care.

And some in the hospital question his amnesia, Hunt-Vasquez said.

She said her gut feeling is that he is being honest and he “has not slipped up once,” but she admits it’s frustrating to not have all the answers.

Wyler said she has tried all kinds of things to test him, for example tricking him with the English language, but she said there have not been any signs that he was making up his situation.

“I don’t think so … but you never know for sure,” she said.

Most of the hospital staff who wanted to release him early don’t take the time to talk to Michael or listen to what’s going on, Hunt-Vasquez said.

“Truthfully he’s non-funded, so he’s kind of lost in the bureaucratic system,” she said.

“They see him as eating up hospital funds and that he should just be discharged to kind of fend for himself,” she added.

She is in the process of trying to secure both Social Security and veteran’s disability benefits for Boatwright, but neither of them are a guarantee. The next step to securing the benefits is to have outside psychiatric and neurological exams conducted.

The hospital is looking for other viable alternatives in the meantime — board and care, financial donations, someone who could take him in as a roommate, “really try to avoid just him being in the streets.”

Unsure of either his past or future, he lets out a small laugh at the suggestion that he could be faking his condition.

“Walk in my shoes for one day,” he said. “You’ll experience the nightmare of a lifetime.”